Twelve Dozen Things
by Dream Treader
Summary: Twelve things each about twelve of the next generation characters.
1. Louis Weasley

Disclaimer (whoops, keep forgetting one of those…): I own nothing

12 things about Louis Weasley

1. Teddy Lupin had always had a large influence on his life. It wasn't just because both of Louis's sisters professed to be madly in love with him, at least until adulthood. It wasn't because Teddy was smart and successful either. It wasn't even because he was tough and brave. Louis admired him because he could change the way he looked. When Louis found out he would never be able to do the same, he made himself be just as brave and resourceful and independent as Teddy had always had to be.

It was the last time he let himself cry.

2. Louis thought Shelia was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. He'd always had a thing for blondes, and she was five foot eleven inches of long, tan, leggy blonde. He'd met her in Vegas, at the pool on top of his hotel, where she sun-bathing topless, and asked to draw her. She had a mole on one breast, just near the nipple, that his eyes and charcoal couldn't leave alone. He was only eighteen and at twenty-eight, she was full of life and knowledge. They were married that night.

Elvis was his favorite wedding.

3. When Theodore Nott told Louis he was beautiful, he had thanked him politely, used to flattery from both genders. Nott told him he was a collector of beautiful things and asked him to travel the world with him and his wife. He hadn't agreed until he'd seen Harmony, several years younger than her husband but old enough to be Louis's mother. He never asked Theodore if he knew Louis was carrying on an affair with Harmony. He'd just figured the man had assumed he was.

He's still ashamed.

4. He moved to India to paint without the interference of his family. It took an entire week to travel to India through magical means, and he knew his family would never think to travel the muggle way. He loved Mumbai, loved traveling around the entirety of India, loved the vivid paintings he'd done there. He was convinced that nowhere else could ever be so beautiful.

He understands why they were so loathe to let it go so long ago.

5. Kelly had intrigued Louis from the first moment he'd met her. She was only seventeen, but already Rose raved about her work at the publishing house. Eight years younger than him, he found her lack of experience appealingly stimulating. She was short and plump with thick glasses and her blonde hair bobbed too short. Her mouth though, was full and sensual, arousing. He loved to draw her mouth, to paint it and make love to it with his lips and his art. She was smarter than he was, though, and even though she'd married him, after just a year, she knew she'd come to regret it. When she left him, she told him that she would always be grateful to him for making her beautiful but that he could never love a woman half as well as he loved the women he painted.

Sometimes he can't paint for missing her.

6. He'd become involved with Nicolette out of sheer desperation. Kelly had left and taken his art with him. Nicolette was the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen, more beautiful than any piece of art could ever do justice. For weeks they had made love and he didn't touch a paintbrush or a charcoal crayon or a pencil. When she told him she was pregnant, he married her. At their wedding, he almost called her Kelly. On their wedding night, he did.

Nicolette never forgave him.

7. When Genevieve and Madeleine were born, Louis asked his sleeping daughters to forgive him. Just a little over half veela, he was afraid they would never find the happiness that eluded him. His maternal grandmother, though, convinced him he was wrong. Beautiful girls, she told him, find happiness easily; it is the beautiful boys that struggle. When Jean-Luc was born, he almost cried. Here was a boy too beautiful for words to describe, putting even his father's face to shame. Louis knows he's damned him to an eternity of searching for and never finding love.

Sometimes he can't bear to look at his son.

8. Louis worried about his daughter's desperately, terrified they would become as bitter and twisted towards each other as his own sisters were. Dominique always felt like she was in Victorie's shadow and Victorie hated that her little sister was more intelligent. He hated that he could never see them at the same time. He was almost glad of their animosity though, when at the memorial service the Weasley's hosted for James almost-fiancée, they ended up in a screaming match, half yelling curses and half-curse words. James could help but laugh. They made up after that night, if only because Maman would've killed them otherwise. He still entitled his painting of the event "The Pettiness of Harpies." Now they have him to be angry at.

He wonders what he will do if his daughters feud.

9. He never had a problem being loyal to any woman he was with. They fascinated his artistic senses for weeks on end, until either he or they ended the affair. The older he gets, the less fascinated he is with women, unless they have plump lips or a brilliant mind or wear think glasses and cut their hair too short. Genevieve, his vainest little darling, once asked him why he loved ugly women so. "They're beautiful to me" he had told her. What about the beautiful women? She had asked, flicking her hair and smiling her practiced smile. "Boring, boring, boring." He'd answered.

He didn't mean to make her cry.

10. Louis worries the most about Madeline. She's terribly shy, and young men often get angry at her for being so cold to them. He's frightened of what might happen to her. That's why he doesn't mind when she becomes best friend with young Aidan Wood next door, even if he is three years older. Aidan teaches her to punch harder than any girl Louis has ever known. He's the Gryffindor beater and only in his second year and Louis has never imagined his little girl so in love. Aidan is handsome, in a warm young puppy dog kind of way, but not too handsome and certainly not who you would expect a beautiful young girl to want. He's fairly intelligent and ambitious, Louis knows but most importantly, he's very kind.

Madeline was always the smartest of his children.

11. Sometimes he hates James. He doesn't mean to, of course, but James loves a dead woman who at least loved him back. He never got the chance to find out if they're love would wither away and die. Sometimes Louis wishes he'd never got the chance to find out that Kelly could only be grateful to him, even as his soul longs for her. He knows what he hates isn't James or fate or his own foolish heart.

He can't make himself admit that sometimes he hates her though.

12. When Jean-Luc ran away the first time, Louis couldn't blame him. He didn't yell or cry or do any of the things he guessed Jean-Luc wanted him to do when the seven year old returned. The second time, he sighed when the neighbors brought him home. By the tenth time Jean-Luc had run away, he didn't even worry. He knew he'd be back. When he wasn't home in two weeks though, Louis panicked, fearing the worst. And then the next day, he'd opened the door to find Jean-Luc holding the hand of a more beautiful, more mature and alluring woman from his past.

He'll never say it, but sometimes he loves Jean-Luc best.


	2. James Sirius Potter

12 Things about James Sirius Potter:

1. After Sandra died, James thought he'd never love again. Her death seemed to define him. There were three periods to his life, in his mind: boyhood, life with Sandra, after life. He never thought she'd die, never imagined he could be so unhappy.

Now, he doesn't remember what happy is.

2. Lily is his favorite sibling, but he'd never tell Al. He had honestly hoped as a boy that Al would be in Slytherin, so that he, the youngest Potter boy, would break the house feud. It was the only wound the Potter's had no hand in healing. James had even wished to be in Slytherin himself. It wasn't to be, and he never told Al he was proud of him.

James always hated to lie.

3. James is close to his dad. He told him once, Harry did, that he was like all the Marauders mixed into one. He was reckless like Sirius, honest like Remus, proud like James. Sometimes James wonders if he's not as much a coward as Peter Pettigrew. Sometimes he envies the man.

He's heard you forget who you are as an animal.

4. James loves jazz. He listens to Glenn Miller or Billie Holliday, and his whole world contracts into a place of peace that he's long forgotten. When Al, two weeks after Sandra's death left him numb in his bed of pain, dragged him to a smoky bar where a live singer was crooning bye bye blackbird, he cried his eyes out in the men's room for the first time. It finally hit him that he would never see her dark eyes and her silky black hair ever again. Al found him, and held him so hard he could barely breathe until his eyes were washed of all tears. It was the first sign of affection he ever shown his older brother that James could remember. He was smart enough to take him home and never mention it afterwards though. He never let him sleep past eight again either.

Al was always the Ravenclaw.

5. When he told the sorting hat he wanted to be in Slytherin to stop the house feud, it laughed at him. "You've got more brave than brains, kid" it had mocked, placing him in Gryffindor. It was right of course, but he's always hated the hat a little, for insinuating Gryffindors were less intelligent than Slytherins.

Sneakier maybe, but never smarter.

6. He can't tell a lie to save his life. Al and Lily find it endlessly entertaining, but he channels something of his Uncle Ron's spirit when trying to get away with something. His ears and face flush red and he stammers out an excuse that a child could see through. He gets caught easily because of it. By the time he'd left Hogwarts, he'd served more time in detention than any one student in the last twenty years before him had.

It never stopped him from playing pranks.

7. He loves quidditch, maybe not in the same way his mom or uncles do, but he loves going to games, loves spending lazy afternoons flying around looking for a snitch. He thinks his dad feels the same way, he plays the same position after all, but even though he could have, he never played professional quidditch either. When James becomes a healer, Harry is the only not even a little disappointed in him.

His dad always did understand him.

8. His dad gave him a big black motorcycle on his seventeenth birthday that had once belonged to Sirius Black. It was a beautiful bike, and he still rides it instead of any other means of transportation. He names it Persephone and Al gives him hell. "It's not a woman," his brother tells him, "and you are not the lord of the underworld." Sometimes Al just doesn't understand. Lily tells him it's a beautiful name and asks for a ride. Their dad is the one who shoots her down. He never wanted Lily to do anything dangerous.

He would have said yes.

9. James didn't like that Teddy was seeing Lily. He didn't like that six months since they'd been seeing each other, the twenty-nine year old man asked James's eighteen year old sister to marry him. He'd always been a little intimidated by Teddy, and he was almost sure the man his father considered like a son would hurt her. When he watched the way the always poised, always careful Lily threw herself over the table at Teddy, James decided to ignore his overprotective side.

It was time they let someone drive Lily crazy.

10. The first time he sees Sandra, he isn't interested. She's one of Lily's coffee house comedy club friends, a muggle girl with a big mouth and a loud laugh. She's pretty enough, he thinks at first, with big black eyes and her long, soft hair, tall and elegantly slim. He'd always been a breast man and she didn't have much of them, well shaped and lovely, he was sure, but not very big. She was funny though, and the sweetest kid he'd ever met. A nurse who specialized in neo-natal care. She would look lovely with a baby, he knew, be a wonderful mother.

One day it just hit him, he was in love.

11. The worst part of Sandra's death, he still thinks, is that it was so preventable. If he had been with her, he could have healed her easily and then wiped the memories of the witnesses. Instead, he was waiting at the restaurant, the box that held an engagement ring she'd never see burning a hole in his pocket as he tried to remember the words he'd rehearsed.

He still has the ring.

12. For about two years after her death, he couldn't date. When he wanted physical release, he'd go to a muggle bar where no one knew him and pick up a girl that reminded him in some way of her. It was Lily, who'd matched him up with Sandra, who set him up with his next girlfriend. Ellie was a sweet girl, a muggle-born Ravenclaw who Lily had tutored when Lily was a fifth year and Ellie in her third. She didn't look a thing like Sandra; she had strawberry blonde hair and big blue eyes and the biggest knockers he'd ever seen. She worked at Flourish and Blott's and knew enough about the muggle world he'd come to love to keep up with him. She loved jazz too, and even though it's been six girlfriends and countless dates since, he's still fond of Ellie.

He thinks that's why he stopped seeing her.


	3. Victorie Weasley

12 Things about Victorie Weasley:

1. She hates her cousin Lily, just a little. She always has. Even Dominique has red hair, but Lily, she thought for sure when Ginny found out she was having a girl, would have black hair, and then Victorie wouldn't be the only one of her female cousins who wasn't a red head. But Lily has red hair, and sometimes she thinks that's why Teddy loves her instead.

Victorie hates red.

2. She knows she is beautiful. There is no way to not know. It isn't vanity, like Louis insists after he calls her ugly and she tells him there is no one in the world lovelier, it's just the cold, hard truth. Louis knows better than her now that beauty counts for nothing. He is as blonde and lovely as she is, and only Dominique has escaped the curse that a beautiful face means you must be seen as dumb, because she is as intelligent as she is beautiful.

She wishes they could all be ugly.

3. Victorie loves her dad's scars. Her mother is inordinately proud of them and Victorie can't help but be too. She even loves them when they scare off the boys she brings home. Maybe more then, because if they run from hideous scars, maybe they're just with her for her pretty face.

She really wants to find someone who doesn't think she's beautiful.

4. She dates Teddy, even though she knows he only wants her because she is gorgeous, and wishes he loved her because she was funny or because she loved to dance or because she can't carry a note. She wishes he would love her for any reason other than her looks.

She doesn't end it until she realizes he doesn't love her at all.

5. George is her favorite uncle. There is something so sad about him, even as he loves his wife and family. Something missing from him, tangible when he rubs his missing ear and stares for just a moment too long at his reflection. It isn't vanity, she knows.

Sometimes she wishes she saw her other half staring back from her reflection too.

6. When she meets Hamish Wood, who hates his first name and winces when it's said aloud, she doesn't realize for almost a whole month that he's blind. He plays chess every Sunday with her in the hospital she volunteers at and he has the sexiest brogue she's ever heard. She only finds out when she stays late one night, dressed as appealingly as she could get away with, and asks him, frustrated that he hasn't noticed, if she looks pretty. He laughs, and tells her she sounds dazzling but he has no idea what she looks like. He's there after a job gone wrong as a curse breaker. His partner didn't survive. Maybe that's why, she thinks, he doesn't complain about what happened.

They play chess in bed now.

7. On her wedding day, she wears unadorned silk, because Hamish loves the feel of it. She wears her hair down and her make-up is natural. Her father, scars covering his face, walks her down the aisle where a man who loves her regardless of her beauty, the same way her father loves her mother, is waiting patiently.

Hamish is always patient with her.

8. Dominique wasn't her maid of honor. She wasn't even there. Victorie had invited her, of course, but she didn't come. Dominique never hated being beautiful, and Victorie think she hates her for that. Dominique has always been jealous that Victorie is seen as the beautiful one and she is the smart one, because Dominique knows she is just as beautiful as her big sister. Maybe she doesn't have moonlight silver hair, but she is every bit as lovely. Victorie knows this is true, even as she encourages her sister's know-it-all reputation.

Victorie is tired of being angry at her sister all the time.

9. Louis painted a family portrait one summer, and she didn't mind. They were all, with the exception of her father and his scars, exceedingly pretty. Louis might even be the best looking, she decides. He paints them as he sees them. Their father with a friendly smile, their mother with an elegant flutter of her eyelashes even in the immobile paint, Dominique with a cunning pout and striking red hair. Only she and Louis look unhappy, her empty blue eyes mock her sad smile while his elegant sneer is as pitiless as it is charming. They are a beautiful family.

She doesn't let him paint her alone.

10. She doesn't remember what she and Dominique fought about at James's almost-fiancée's memorial service. She only remembers pitch black anger and the desire to hurt her sister so overpowering that she uses words and flesh and not just magic. She remembers crying, crying, crying and Hamish holding her as if she were a child, stroking her hair and mumbling endearments. When their mother forced them to make up, she was glad. She still resents Louis calling them harpies. Only veela resemble harpies when they are angry.

Victorie is not a veela.

11. Sometimes she feels worse for Louis than she ever felt for herself. She can see his misery written plainly on his face when he looks at his son. "Maybe he'll find a blind girl." She tells him. He smiles grimly and tells her his son is too vain for that.

Jean-Luc always did remind her of Dominique.

12. She loves when Hamish combs her hair. She knows he cannot see how pretty she is, but she knows he can feel it. Sometimes, when he touches her, she can hear his breath become unsteady and she's glad she found this average looking Scotsman to love her. Still, sometimes she wishes he could see them standing together in the mirror.

He is the most beautiful thing about her, she thinks.


	4. Dominique Weasley

12 Things about Dominique Weasley

1. When she was young, Dominique hated her name with a passion. It was too close to a boy's name and half the time people would pronounce it wrong if they weren't paying attention. She always wanted a light, feminine name like Fleur or Victorie or Apolline. Instead she was stuck with Dominique.

Dominique didn't feel like she belonged to anyone.*

2. She asked the sorting hat to put her into Gryffindor like Victorie had been or at least into Slytherin which would have been scandalous and made the perfect backdrop for a petty feud between her and her sister. Instead, the worthless hat placed her into Ravenclaw, where she would "fit in" and "be happiest."

She doesn't like admitting when she's wrong.

3. She knows she'll never be as appealing as Victorie, because as the saying goes, gentlemen prefer blondes. When Lily watched that old muggle musical with her and the blonde girl claimed it wasn't really that gentlemen preferred blondes, it was just that blondes looked dumber, she didn't feel any better. It doesn't matter that red heads can find love too, like Aunt Ginny and Granny M.

Dominique isn't blonde or dumb.

4. She asked Louis to paint her as a blonde once. He frowned at her and refused. She had too many charming little freckles to have the same pale blonde coloring he and Victorie had. Besides which, her eye lashes were too dark. If he made her blonde, with pale little eyelashes, her eyes would bug out unattractively. You are a charming red-head, he told her. That Christmas, he gave her a muggle book filled with romantic paintings of beautiful redheads. "To Our La Belle Dame Sans Merci" he wrote on the first page. When she flipped through the pages to Sir Frank Dicksee's painting, she had to admit she did resemble the woman on horseback.

It was the first time she really liked her hair.

5. She loves Victorie, she really does. Sometimes, though, Dominique just gets so mad at her. When she dated Teddy, Dominique was furious. It was embarrassing, she thought, to go out with a boy so obviously uninterested in anything but having a pretty piece of candy on his arm. Teddy, she knew, should be with a redhead. They were more passionate, and Teddy needed a woman who could get angry and fight back when he was in one of his jaded and despondent moods.

She just never thought it would be little Lily Luna.

6. She knows Victorie and Louis think she's vain. She just doesn't know if it's because they assume they are better looking. Sometimes, she thinks they must scoff at her, thinking she is beautiful when she is just as redheaded as all their cousins. She is not unique; she is not charmingly ethereal like Victorie, or angelically enthralling like Louis. She's just a redhead with pretty blue eyes and a practiced smile. So when her mother plays with her hair lovingly and sighs "it's just like your father's!" in her captivating French accented English, Dominique does feel special.

Their beautiful blonde mother fell in love with their redheaded father, after all.

7. She likes their cousin Lily best. Lily, she thinks, must know how it is to be the odd woman out. Lily's hair is as red as her own, just as out of place with her black-haired brothers as Dominique is with her blonde siblings. When Teddy marries Lily, Dominique is happy for them, even as she is a little jealous. Still though, redheads should stick together, so she agrees to help Lily find a dress, because it is common knowledge in the family that Dominique is the most stylish. Maybe she's not the most beautiful, but she certainly knows how to dress. On Teddy and Lily's wedding day, Dominique knows that the whole family is wrong about her and Victorie.

Lily, radiantly happy in her bridal gown, is the most beautiful person she's ever seen.

8. Dominique remembers what started that legendary fight at Sandra's memorial service. "Well, at least I can find a man to love me for something other than my looks!" Victorie had huffed. Dominique punched her. She didn't like the implication that no man could love her, not even for her looks. She didn't like to admit that she was angry because she was afraid it must be true. Men liked her sure, as long as she kept quiet and dressed her best. But Dominique had no patience for stupidity and the men she dated never lasted long.

Sometimes she wishes she were dumb.

9. When she went with Lily to a werewolf rights hearing, she was unsure what she would be doing there. Just come and listen, decide which side to lend support to, Lily had asked. Teddy, as an Auror, couldn't be so obviously involved in political matters. Dominique had gone to keep her cousin company, although she knew she wasn't Lily's first choice as a companion. A little irritated, she wears an old pair of paint splattered jeans and one of Victorie's pink Weasley sweaters that clashes with her hair and doesn't do her hair or makeup. She looks okay, she knows, but certainly not beautiful. It doesn't matter though; she didn't want to look nice there. They are werewolves after all, the scum of society. She had always been angry towards the werewolves, angry at the one who had attacked her father, but when Julian Greyback got up to speak, she was enthralled.

She thinks she understands why her mother is so fascinated by her father's scars.

10. She knew that Julian's father had been the one to attack hers even before she went up to talk to him. She just didn't care. It was almost as if he had some veela in him, although Dominique knew that was impossible. His eyes were a murky yellow-green and his hair was an unexceptional light brown. Claw marks covered one cheek and down the side of his throat. His smile was warm, if just a little cautious. When he apologized about his father, Dominique fell in love. Werewolves must be a bit like bulls, she thinks, to be so fascinated by red.

She's glad now she wasn't born blonde.

11. Her family is wary of Julian, because his father was so vicious. It is not her father, who suffered firsthand at the hands of Fenrir who welcomes him into the family at the Christmas dinner she first brings him to, but Teddy. Probably, she knows, at Lily's insistence. But Teddy is the son of a werewolf also, and even if he never knew his father and isn't a werewolf himself, he feels the stigma more than anyone else. Teddy claps him on the shoulder and offers him a drink in the silence after she introduces him. Julian smiles back, and Dominique melts all over again.

It's her mother that welcomes him next.

12. On nights when the moon is full in the sky, Fleur and Lily and Dominique have a girl's night out. Teddy is grumpy and impatient, itching for a fight. Bill is unnecessarily mean and can drive her mother to tears. Only Julian is able to fulfill the angry transformation the other's bodies know they're missing. So she kisses him in the evening before she leaves, locks him down in the bomb shelter he's converted to hold himself in, and goes out to a comedy club when Lily picks or an all night cinema when her mother does, or a smoky bar where music is sung by someone whose voice isn't quite enough to make them famous when it's her turn. She listens in pity to them, watching as they try to get somewhere they're not going to reach.

You won't find happiness looking for it, she knows.

*Dominique means "belongs to the Lord"


	5. Albus Severus Potter

12 Things about Albus Severus Potter:

1. Albus is terrified of clowns. He knows there's no basis for it, but he is. He doesn't even know where he first saw a clown. He just knows they scare him. But when Uncle George accidently let a boggart loose at a family dinner, he could have kissed one. Seeing a decaying, mutilated corpse that he knew must be his long dead Uncle Fred make George and every adult at the table tremble in sorrow and fear, he was happy to step forward (the bravest thing he's ever done, he still thinks) and turn a dead man into a clown. It was James who laughed at him, which made him angry and embarrassed and bitter all at once, but that laugh was enough to break the spell. He's still afraid of clowns, and he knows that George's boggart hasn't changed for years and years and years.

He doesn't know how you can still be afraid when your worst fear has already been realized.

2. When they were children, he was sure James thought he was sneaky and evil because his big brother was so sure Albus would be a Slytherin. When Albus was sorted into Ravenclaw, James was disappointed in him. He didn't understand his older brother's illogically non-linear mind at all. It wasn't until Albus became friends with Scorpius Malfoy, who though in his year was a Slytherin, that he understood. James had always been narcissistic enough to think the world revolved around their family and that nothing could be solved without them. But he never said anything, because in some ways James was right. He and Scorpius did end the house rivalry.

Albus never took the obvious route.

3. It is Molly who finally gets sorted into Slytherin. She's the year below Albus and he makes sure Scorpius watches out for her. The only fist fight Albus is ever in is when he catches his best friend kissing his cousin. He relents after a few days however, and even though he starts spending more time with Rose, in the same year and house as him, he's still friends with Scorpius.

It's the first time he really hates when someone falls in love.

4. Charlie, far away with his dragons in Romania, is his favorite uncle. Charlie's had many lovers Albus knows, probably of both genders. Sex, like food and air, is secondary to Charlie's passion for his dragons. It gives Albus hope, because if one member of the family can avoid the heartaches that plague so many of them, than Albus can too. He can spend his life translating ancient texts instead of chasing after love. When Charlie brings a shockingly young Romania woman, heavily pregnant, home to meet the family, Albus is a little angry. If even Charlie falls for his Ioana, what hope is there for Albus?

He doesn't want to fall in love.

5. He learns to like Ioana, despite his best efforts. She reminds him of a pretty lemur. She has short dark hair and big bright eyes over a big nose and wide smile. She is extraordinarily intelligent though, and unlike Lily who was once so smart until she decided she was in love, having a bunch of redheaded babies (Ioana laughs) doesn't seem to kill off her brain cells. He tells her she would have been a Ravenclaw, and she always makes sure to set a place at their table for him. When they name their son Akos, which means white falcon, she tells him they chose it because the baby reminds them of him. He doesn't see himself in the redheaded baby boy, whose murky blue eyes he knows won't be green like his own but rather blue or brown.

Akos is his favorite cousin anyway.

6. When Sandra dies, Albus doesn't quite know what to do. James, always so strong and in control, lies wasting away in his old bed at their parents' home. He drags him to a bar because Albus knows the healing power of alcohol. He doesn't realize it's the music, not the booze, that makes James cry, until he finds him in the bathroom retching because he's sobbing so hard. He's never seen his brother cry and it scares him. So he grabs him tightly, to keep him off the dirty floor (even if Albus sits there himself) and lets James cry himself half to sleep. He doesn't mention it, because he would be as embarrassed as James, but he remembers and he forces himself awake early every morning, because James has always done better on less sleep than more and he never wants to see his brother that sad again.

He doesn't tell James that his boggart has changed, and he doesn't let anyone see it.

7. When Teddy marries Lily, Albus is glad. He knows James is angry about it at first, but he can't understand why. Lily is a great sister and she deserves the absolute best. Teddy, he knows already, is as good a man as woman can get. They will never have to worry about Teddy leaving Lily or hurting her or breaking her heart. Albus is glad he will not have to threaten, ridiculously ineffectively, to hurt Teddy if he hurts Lily. Besides which, Lily is obviously happy.

It's the first time he doesn't mind someone falling in love.

8. He's talked to her so many times, as he looks and buys for books, that it's an easy step to ask her out to dinner. She hesitates, and tells him she dated his brother. Albus considers this, and her, and asks "Did you sleep with him?" When she blushes and stammers, he assumes she did. He shrugs, James has slept with so many girls, he knows, and tells her "It doesn't matter anyway, would you like have dinner with me?" When Ellie says yes, he feels an odd burn of victory.

He still doesn't sleep with her.

9. He likes her well enough, but he knows it's not love. He thinks she would make a perfectly acceptable wife, and considers asking her. That Christmas, when James kisses her longingly beneath the mistletoe, Albus knows he won't. He may not want to fall in love, but he doesn't want to marry a woman in love with his brother either.

When Ellie marries James, he stands as best man.

10. He didn't like her when they first met. She was obviously spoiled and bad-tempered. He was at a café with Louis, discussing the long lost book of Russian fables he had just finished translating that Louis was illustrating for him. An elegant if aging blonde woman came up to Louis and greeted him familiarly. While Louis looked as if he watched to escape the clutches of the woman dragging him off to say hello to her husband, she yelled back at her daughter to keep him company. His eyes met hers over the table as she popped her gum, rolled her pale blue eyes, and twirled her pretty red hair.

Clarice Nott had the deadliest glare he'd ever seen.

11. He was surprised to find himself falling for Clarice. James was the one who pointed it out, before Albus himself even noticed. They were working together at the ministry to translate early Etruscan texts and he would purposely provoke her to anger. Something about her glare made him shiver. He liked the feeling, liked her being as bothered as he was. When he got home, he would complain about her to anyone who would listen. "Look, Al," James had sighed one day when he interrupted James and Ellie intimately reacquainting themselves in the middle of the afternoon, "go kiss her already and leave us alone."

He liked Clarice's kisses even better than her glares.

12. Their first child is a daughter, and he falls in love all over again. They name her Emma, because Clarice continues to believe Jane Austen is the height of literature no matter how many times he tries to introduce her to a long dead Russian poet or an early American novelist. Emma has Clarice's red hair and Albus' green eyes and when his parents see her for the first time, his dad almost cries. She looks, he knows, like his long dead grandmother. He does her the favor of not naming her after Lily Potter however, because he, like his siblings and many of his cousins, knows how hard it can be to live up to the dead. Albus knows he is nothing like Headmasters Dumbledore or Snape. He's talked to their portraits enough to be glad of it.

Albus is entirely his own person.


	6. Rose Weasley

A/N: I'm sorry, I dropped my laptop so I'm having it fixed which means I'm doing this on the main computer so it'll take me longer. I have two more chapters already written out (just need to type them) and three partially done, so it shouldn't take me forever. I'm trying to get this story done before the 10th, since I'm going overseas and I won't have time to write and post (at least as much) for the month.

12 Things About Rose Weasley:

1. Rose loves love. She reads romance novels and love poems, sings along to romantic music, and dreams that one day her prince will come. She tries to keep her fantasies secret, but her cousins know and tell her to grow up, warning her against heartache. Only Lily understands, so sure in her secret love for her father's godson. But while Lily pictures Beauty and the Beast, Rose imagines Sleeping Beauty and shudders at her cousin's courage.

Rose is afraid someday she will have to be brave.

2. Rose likes being the Damsel in Distress. It's something her mom, a bona fide war hero, doesn't understand. Hermione loves adventure and excitement and gaining knowledge from first hand experience. Rose pictures herself as a fairy tale princess.

Maybe with the right man's kiss, she'll be as brave as her mother.

3. Rose loves electric blue. It's tacky, her mother tells her, and her aunts agree. It's not in style, her female cousins argue. It looks ridiculous, the boys add. She waves her family off with a dainty flick of her electric blue nails. Everyone pictures her loving a soft, girly pink to go with her soft, girly personality. She doesn't disagree, but she'll never abandon the metallic shimmer of her favorite blue.

It's just another thing about herself she just can't explain.

4. Rose loves her hair. Her dad calls her Rose-red after a muggle fairy tale her mom told him, and she imagines she will marry a handsome price of a man as the mythical Rose-red did. He will be gentle and kind and everyone will love him.

Even as a little girl, Rose always knows exactly what she wants.

5. The first time she looked into Damien Greengrass's ice cold blue eyes, Rose was terrified. She thought he must be evil. She'd hard nightmares about his eyes, his patrician face so hard and closed, a bitter sneer twisting his mouth. He was five years older than her, and savagely warped into a cold, hard monster.

She thought he must be impossible to love.

6. Rose hated being a Gryffindor. Privately, she thought she would have made a better Hufflepuff. She wasn't cunning enough to be a Ravenclaw or a Slytherin, but she never thought of herself as brave either.

It took a man to love her to show her that she has her own kind of courage.

7. Rose loves trashy muggle romance novels. While Hugo was reading Les Miserables in the original French, Rose was reading The Italian Count's Blackmailed Virgin or a similar title. Her dad's ears would turn as red as his hair whenever he found a book she left lying around, and her mother would tsk disapprovingly and buy her a copy of The Scarlet Pimpernel or another classic. She always gave them to Hugo instead. Every year, for her birthday and at Christmas, Hugo buys her a copy of every harlequin novel on the shelves of the local drugstore.

She could never ask for a better sibling.

8. Rose loves children, just like her Granny M, and while she's perfectly contented having only Hugo as a sibling, she has dreams of a large family of her own someday. She wants at least seven, she knows, with hair as red as her own.

She's always known she'd find a man who would agree.

9. Rose is a little afraid of Scorpius, who reminds her so much of his older, unacknowledged brother. She's a little afraid of Molly, too, who can be manipulative and cruel. So when Molly asks her in their sixth year if she'll be her maid of honor at the wedding Molly is already planning two years away, Rose is stunned. When she asks her cousin why, Molly shrugs, blowing hair the same shade as Rose's out of her eyes. "You're enough of a romantic to believe in redemption." She tells Rose, and then smiles her wicked looking shark's grin.

Only Molly and Rose know she wasn't scared into agreeing.

10. She learned what real monsters were after the breakout from Azkaban. She was shopping for her last year at Hogwarts in Diagon Alley when the eighteen escaped prisoners showed up. It was Amycus Carrow, she knows, who ripped her blouse open to reveal her lucky electric blue bra as he shoved her to the ground. When Damien appeared between them just after, she thought he must be there to help them hurt her. His look of surprise disabused that idea and he shocked her when he killed Amycus with a well placed blast without a flicker of emotion. She'll never forget the hole blasted in her attacker's chest, and she'll never forget the man who saved her.

She decided then to learn to read him in the silence of his stillness.

11. When the Aurors arrived moments behind him, many of them her uncles and cousins, she still refused to untwine her hands from about his neck. He was much taller than her, and he held himself stiff and awkward even as he rubbed her back comfortingly, letting her fingers scramble for security in his blonde hair.

She kissed him the day after she graduated and was never more surprised than when he kissed her back.

12. His mother's younger sister is married to Scorpius's dad, she knows, and that's why Draco Malfoy will never acknowledge that Damien is his own. She privately thinks of Damien's mother as the Wicked Witch of The West to Astoria's Glenda, but if there is one thing Rose respects Daphne Greengrass for, it's how well she raised her son. He was an angry, bitter youth, but he's a good man.

He's an even better father.


	7. Lucy Weasley

12 Things about Lucy Weasley:

1. Lucy is the forgotten Weasley. She is average in everything; redheaded just like most of her cousins, smack in the middle age wise, quiet and bookish but not enough to be considered either memorable or smart.

All Lucy ever really wanted was to be great at something.

2. She never thought she would ever get the chance kiss Ivan Krum. His father Victor was famous and even though he occasionally visited her Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron, Lucy herself was beneath the Krum family's notice. Mr. Krum's oldest son Ivan was four years older than her, and she'd only ever admired him from the other side of family gatherings he was roped into attending.

He was even better looking up close.

3. It was her nineteenth birthday, she had just graduated from Hogwarts, and Molly dragged her to the hippest bar in London. She let her sister do her hair and makeup and dress her up just like she used to let her do to the dolls they would play with as girls. When she saw herself in the mirror, red hair wild around her shoulders instead of in its usual braid, a low cut top showing just how great average could be and the mini-skirt that showed off legs that five inch red heels made even more shapely than usual, Lucy thought she looked like a high class hooker, Molly said she looked sexy, and Ivan danced with her all night.

He told her she was a great kisser.

4. Lucy has always been a little ashamed of her father. His record during The War (always capitalized in her mind) was hardly something to be proud of, after all. He barely fought, and privately she thought he did more harm than good. His actions at the final battle hardly canceled out what he had done before, she thought. When she found out how her Uncle Fred died, she blamed him for it, for making Uncle George and Aunt Angelina the miserable shells they sometimes become.

She still blames him.

5. She's a little afraid of Granny M. The loud, loving matron of the family intimidates her. There is just too much passion for one person to contain in her, and she lets go with her emotions whenever she feels them boil up and over. She can get so angry and then so sad and it terrifies Lucy because her mom is always cool and calm and collected even when she's angry.

Especially when she's disappointed.

6. Lucy envies Molly. Her big sister, the first Slytherin in generations, is pretty and popular and good at everything. Everything comes so easy to Molly, Lucy thinks, even Scorpius, and Lucy is jealous. More than that, she is angry that Molly doesn't appreciate everything she has more. She sneers at her accomplishments and talks badly about her friends and she's even cruel to Scorpius, trying to make him jealous and crazy over her.

Molly, Lucy sees, is just like their father.

7. When they were younger, Lucy had always been a little in awe of cousin Lily. She is just a year older than Lily, but she fancies that she remembers that it was like when she was born, the celebrations of the birth as magnificent as if little Lily Luna was a first born princess. She's always been treated that way, by everyone in the family. Lily takes it as her due, but she's so sugar sweet that Lucy can't hate her. Lily is as boring and sweet and perfect as every fairy tale princess ever was.

Lucy still thinks of Lily as a princess.

8. Lucy is allergic to cats. She can't be around them without sneezing as if the world were trying to vacuum her brain through her nose. She would like to think that that was the reason she didn't make it into the house Professor McGonagall, the cat animagous, headed up. The hat told her she was loyal and hardworking and that she just wasn't brave enough to be a Gryffindor (Lucy refuses to believe it).

She much prefers being a Hufflepuff, really.

9. Lucy didn't know what loyalty was. She didn't think of herself or her family that way. After all, she blamed her father for things she logically knew weren't his fault, disappointed her mother without ever meaning to, and fought with her sister over ever little thing either of them could find a way to fight about. She'd never even had a boyfriend to be loyal to until Ivan. When she confessed that to him, his dark eyes glittered and his brooding frown lightened. "You have been loyal to me than, my love?" he clarified, and she agreed.

She's glad she's loyal, even if she's not quite sure what it means.

10. Lucy was terrible at school, terrible at flying, at languages and making friends and being graceful and beautiful. Terrible at life in general. Or worse, she was entirely average at all of it. She was even more average looking "Lucy Weasley? Oh right, her. She's alright, I guess," the boys would say. But alright is not beautiful and that's why she hated Dominique.

It wasn't fair for a fellow redhead to be so beautiful.

12. She'd been afraid of passion until she and Ivan had their first big blow up fight. It was then that she learned just how alike to Granny M she was. It was at a family dinner and she thought she caught him looking at her cousin Dominique. She couldn't bear that, so she screamed at him and threw breakable things that broke satisfyingly and threw hexes every which way; calling him all sorts of words she didn't know she knew. When he kissed her to shut her up, angrier than she could ever imagine him being, and slammed her back against a wall as he bruised her lips with his own and she scratched him feverishly, she finally knew something about herself she's never understood and always feared.

She's great at being passionate.


	8. Hugo Weasley

12 Things about Hugo Weasley:

1. Hugo might be a Ravenclaw, smart and scholarly, but he has his father's temper. In the quietest house at Hogwarts, his explosive anger could get loud and ugly, and on occasion, violent. His anger and the fighting lessons Teddy had given him and all the boys could, and had, landed several people in the hospital wing before he calmed down enough to be rational. He always regretted him outbursts and would mumble his apologizes to the boys he put in the hospital wing.

Hugo isn't smart when he's angry.

2. When he was little, his father put him on a broom everyday, even as his mother forced books down his throat. He learned to love them both, so maybe it shouldn't have come as a surprise when he was sorted into Ravenclaw, but he still didn't like it. He wanted to be a Gryffindor and make his parents proud, just like his sister did. They say they are just as proud of him, regardless of his house, but he knows they both must feel a kind of disappointment in him. Ron Weasley was the consummate Gryffindor, and he knows his mother doesn't believe he will be brave enough to stand up for what he knows is right. Maybe it's because he's trying so hard to prove he's brave that he always gets hurt in quidditch.

He is the most fearless beater Ravenclaw ever had.

3. He isn't much like his mom, even though everyone says that's where he gets his brains from. She would've been a Ravenclaw, he knows, if she were less brave. Instead she was a Gryffindor like his sister and his dad and his Uncles and numerous cousins. A lot of his cousins are in Ravenclaw too, he knows, but none of them are the only son of Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger.

He hates feeling like a coward.

4. Hugo loves chess. He loves controlling the game pieces, fighting a war on the black and white tiles. He knows most wizards flinch from losing their pieces. His dad, who loves chess and taught him how to play, hates losing pieces and does it only for the greatest good. Hugo is strangely comfortable with the brutal demise of the miniature figures. They are just pawns, he thinks, even as they scream.

He worries that he will be comfortable with the demise of people, too.

5. Hugo loves languages. He learns them quickly and he loves each one with a special tenderness. He loves French, so cynical and relaxed; Russian, passionate and stormy; German, commanding and strong; Italian, the language of vengeance and emperors. He imagines traveling all over Europe and loving a woman in the countries of his languages (they are his, he thinks, made for his eyes to scan and his mouth to speak), loving a different woman and knowing that each one will never be _the one_.

He is as much of a romantic as his sister.

6. He speaks the words women want to hear, the language of romance novels, thanks to his sister, and as the lies fall smoothly (so much like Bill! Granny M tells everyone who will listen fondly) from lips that smile as he tricks his way from bed to bed, Hugo forgets to feel shame. They all love him, he knows, but he is a cad and a bastard and a womanizer and he freely admits and acknowledges it.

He is just waiting for a girl to reform him, he tells himself.

7. Brigitta Finch-Fletchley barely raised a blip on his radar for women. She was pretty enough, like the blonde woman from that muggle St. Pauli beer come to life. It was an earthy, accessible type of pretty. She wasn't exotic and mysterious, just the daughter of a rich muggle-born and the witch he met while exiled in Switzerland during the war. He slept with her because she was young and pretty and virginal and he wanted to prove to his friend's he could have any girl he wanted panting for him no matter how well they thought they guarded their virtue. When she told him she was pregnant, he didn't trust her. He had no reason not to, but he didn't want to believe it.

Hugo has never wanted to be a father.

8. Hugo has never pictured himself as the bad guy, but as he burns a copy of the paternity test results he insisted on, he knows that that is exactly what he has become. "I don't want your money," he remembers her soft voice telling him; "I don't need it. I just thought that you should know."

He doesn't quite know if he can bring himself to acknowledge his own child.

9. It isn't Rose that talks sense into him, or his father or grandfather, not that every member of the family doesn't try. It wasn't even Teddy, who has looked after all the Weasleys and Potters as if they were his own flesh and blood, but Louis, a cousin he rarely talked to before the scandal broke. Louis speaks to him in French, an effort, he guesses to make him remember to think before he speaks or acts. Louis, damned by his beauty, has three kids of his own by an ex-wife. "Trust me," he tells Hugo, "You never want to be a father until you are one." I am one, Hugo responds, and I still don't want to be one. "No, you are just a man who has knocked a girl up." Louis scolds him, and leaves. He brushes off the conversation until the next family dinner. Louis, as somber as always, is paying rapt attention as one of his twin daughters shows him a new doll someone got her. "She's almost as beautiful as me," the little girl boasts and Louis laughs.

Hugo pictures a daughter of his own with hair as blonde as honey.

10. Brigitta marries him only because her family is traditional and he is the father of her unborn child. He thinks he fell in love with her as she walked towards him down the aisle, on her father's arm. Her cream and gold dress emphasized everything good pregnancy had done to her body and breezed over her tummy. "My wife and my daughter are walking towards me" he whispered to Louis, standing beside him, his eyes locked on his bride in awe. Louis laughed and Brigitta smiled at Hugo, sticking her tongue out just a little as she heard her mother and his grandmother burst into tears.

He kissed her passionately even before they said "I do."

11. As Brigitta swelled and swelled, it became obvious that there was that that baby was not a girl, but two little boys. Oberon and Odolf. His perfect redheaded baby boys. They were good babies, not fussy but quite content to listen to their mother and father learn to love each other. And soon enough, Oberon and Odolf were joined by Roderick, then Godfrey, and Wilhelm, then Ernst, and Fritz, and Vasyl. Finally, finally Hugo got his little baby girl in Czarina. She wasn't blonde, none of Brigitta's babies shared her hair, they all his bright red, but all of them had their mother's beautiful violet blue eyes.

She is the woman he would have searched his whole life for and never found.

12. Late at night, when Brigitta is curled up in his arms sleeping peacefully he murmurs to her in every language he knows. "Je vous aime pour l'éternité." He whispers in the shell of her ear. "Sei l'unica donna che abbia mai amato." He tells the soft hair framing her forehead, so beautiful and blond that it makes his heart ache. "я хочу жить моей целой жизнью в вашем оружии." He mutters against her jaw as he traces her stomach with his hands. "Uwielbiam każdy cal Ciebie." He mouth traces the words from one cheek across to the other, her skin soft against his morning beard. "Sie sind mein Herz und Seele" He ends, kissing her softly on the mouth as she snuggles deeper into him and he forces himself to sleep because he must get up and work tomorrow even though he'd rather watch her sleep.

Hugo never thought he could be so happy.


	9. Fred Weasley II

12 Things about Fred Weasley II

1. He has always known that his parents only married because they equally grieved for his lost uncle, his namesake. They don't love each other passionately and completely, in the way his Uncle Bill and Aunt Fleur do, or with soft understanding and understated affection like Hermione and Ron, or even the teasing, joyful love that Harry and Ginny share. They don't love each other like anyone else he knows of. He doesn't think they love each other at all. He thinks they do care about each other though, in the sad, soft way that married couples who have lost more than they thought they ever had do.

He wishes they loved each other joyfully or passionately or affectionately, though.

2. He's angry at his Uncle Fred. It's why he insists on being called Freddie, even though his parents look miserable and wounded whenever he corrects anyone. He wants to differentiate himself from the dead specter that has haunted his family since the war, who probably would have haunted them less if he had become a ghost and really haunted them. He doesn't want to be the same person his uncle was.

He doesn't want to burn bright and die young.

3. As hard as he tries to be different, he knows he truly is like his Uncle Fred. Sometimes when he tries to make him mom cheer up and laugh in a way he's only imagined and never really heard (he wonders if the Mirror of Erised has sound) with a silly prank or an off the cuff one liner, she cries instead and goes to her room with ginger ale and ice cream.

Freddie hates ginger ale and ice cream and emotional woman.

4. Sometimes his dad says half of a sentence or a joke and trails off, as if waiting for someone to finish his thought. Everyone knows exactly who he's waiting for, and they know the joke will never be finished and the thought never fully formed. Everyone tears up and gives silent, painful sympathy. Freddie just waits for him to start over again with a change in subject. When he was younger he used to pry, "What's the punch line dad?" he'd asked. It was only a few years before he learned that his dad never finishes those jokes.

Freddie doesn't think his dad has any tears or laughter left.

5. Roxanne never cries, even as a baby, and Freddie is grateful. He picked the name from the movie that his mother loves, because maybe someday she will realize it is his father she has always loved and not his dead uncle. Roxanne is a pretty baby and a prettier girl and Freddie grows to be quite over-protective, but James and Albus are the same way with Lily Luna and his father and uncles must have been with Aunt Ginny. He adores his little sister because she laughs at his pranks and jokes even when their parents won't.

He likes making people laugh.

6. Freddie and Roxanne have a falling out when he is sixteen, and she somehow manages to avoid talking to her brother for a full five years. It isn't hard, Freddie realizes, no one really talks in their house anyway and family events are big enough that they barely have to be in the same room. Roxanne is proud and angry and she has the same tenacity their dad and Uncle Fred had when they were young, determined to make their own way in the world by their own means. So his life is even more silent and no laughter echoes in their empty home.

He doubts anyone even notices.

7. Maria Zabini is beautiful, Freddie recognizes, even at fourteen. She is a quarter black and three-fourth's Italian and the lovely mix is striking. Her cafe au lait skin tone and curly dark brown set off her light green eyes and her perfectly straight white teeth. Her smile is disarmingly sharp and her practiced pout mesmerizes even him, an experienced seventeen year old. He tutors in her History of Magic, because nearly the whole school was failing now that Professor Binns had been replaced and he gets house points for helping out a small number of assigned students. She is quick, as most Slytherins must be, and she uses her beauty effortlessly as though she were using magic. It reminds him almost of Dominique, another cold, hard beauty. But while Dominique is looking for love, he knows, Maria is untouchable.

He treats her with the same teasing patience he does his cousins.

8. After he graduates, he takes over the world-wide Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes business and expands it even more, making profits go up by 15% in his first quater alone. His father is happy to retire, and Freddie is almost unreasonably angry at him for it. He worries about him withdrawing even more from day to day life, as though as soon as his father decides he is no longer needed he will off himself. His dad doesn't, but spends most of his time with his own parents, putzing around the Burrow as though if he pretended hard enough, he would be sixteen again and his twin brother would be home.

Freddie has given up on making the people he loves happy.

9. When he is twenty-three, he runs into Maria again. She hasn't changed, that he can tell. Physically, she has only gotten more beautiful. But she has come alone to a charity ball that costs five thousand galleons to attend and she is bidding on the items in silent auction by herself. He joins her, enquires about her life and asks if she is there with anyone. She gives him a softer smile than he's ever seen on someone as beautiful as her and declares that she is alone. He secretly out bids her for a beautiful ruby collar that drips the gem stones from a thick gold setting with matching earrings. He imagines the stones lying warm on her chest and thinks how beautiful the sight would be.

Maria kisses him hard when he puts it on her.

10. He buys her the biggest ruby he can find as an engagement ring and when she shakily tells him her family history before anyone else can, he laughs. "Are you planning to kill me for my money? Because darling, I don't think that I would mind." It's the first real fight they ever have. He didn't mean to imply that he would be willing to die to have her body, but she's always been insecure about why anyone else would want her.

I love every inch of your body and every portion of your soul, he tells her, and he means it.

11. Maria doesn't have very many close friends, and so she extends the olive branch to Roxanne, who still can barely stand to talk to him, and asks her to be made of honor. Tearfully, Roxanne accepts, and hugs her brother harder than she ever has before. She won't let go of him, sobbing into his neck, and he begins to understand. He always hated miserable people too. Maria finally calms her down, and serves coffee and sweet cakes. She and Roxanne begin on wedding plans and he goes off to run his business away from the giggling girls. He goes off to cry his own tears too.

On their wedding day, even his parents are smiling.

12. They name their first children Frederick Gideon Weasley III. His parents smiles are beautiful even through their tears. Two years later comes George Fabian Weasley II, and then Marilyn Maria. It's not long after Mari is sorted into Gryffindor, just like her older brothers were, that his father dies of a heart attack. He is buried next to his twin, just as he had always wanted, with a smile on his sorrow lined face. Freddie cries openly at the funeral, as does his mother, who he holds as tightly as he can without feeling as if he will break her. When she tearfully asks him "Why did he leave me too?" Freddie knows how to answer her: "Because they are both waiting for you." He goes home, where his wife makes coffee and biscotti and his children talk to their cousins and his aunts and uncles and whole family mourns, and when he goes to bed that night, he feels the warmth of love.

It is deep and slow, he knows, and sometimes love makes people act insane or live unhappy lives and sometimes it makes all their dreams come true, but it is there and he is glad of it.


	10. Scorpius Malfoy

A/N: I'm sorry Fred's story was so sad, but I loved the twins and I can't picture them being happy apart. Poor George!

12 Things about Scorpius Malfoy:

1. Scorpius is nine when he meets his half-brother. He wandered off into Knockturn Alley and a tall, blonde boy with the same sneer Lucius Malfoy always wore around people who weren't family (and often around them as well), dragged him away from a group of cackling hags. Draco was on an acquisitioning trip, but Astoria paled and dragged Scorpius behind her when the teen unceremoniously dropped the wrist he had been dragging him by in front of his mother. "Aunt," he nodded pleasantly and walked away. Scorpius wrote to his father, picturing a long lost brother or sister of his father's. "I love your mother," Draco wrote back, "But that doesn't mean I don't make mistakes." Scorpius thought the biggest mistake was not telling him sooner.

It was lonely being an only child in Malfoy Manor.

2. His Grandma Narcissia and Grandfather Lucius are passionately in love he knows, even after half a century of marriage. They fight and bicker and are downright cruel to one another, and for a long time, Scorpius thought they must hate each and only stayed together because of tradition. His grandmother had a temper and his grandfather could maliciously do things that he knew would make her furious. One day, a man insulted Narcissia; older now and not as beautiful as she had been when she was young, calling her a filthy Death Eater's whore. Scorpius thought his grandfather was going beat the man to death with his cane, his attack was so savage. When his grandma pulled her husband away and kissed him affectionately, Scorpius finally understood what kept them together through everything.

Scorpius hopes he never falls passionately in love.

3. Scorpius loves his dad. He knows he is a bad man, even now after the war is he still bitter and arrogant and prejudiced, and Draco picks and chooses the laws he follows, but despite everything, he is a great father. He taught Scorpius to read, fly, make potions, he spent time wit him as he grew up, and he never forgot to praise him or tell him he was proud of him, or that he loved him. Still, when people try to get to Scorpius by attacking his dad, he doesn't defend Draco. He doesn't need to.

He knows his dad is a bad man, after all, but he loves him anyway.

4. His mother is a soft, gentle woman who loves to garden and drink tea and play the piano. She's taught Scorpius since he was old enough to sit on a piano stool. His Grandma Narcissia pouts when they play, dismissing the piano as a worthless muggle instrument. Grandfather Lucius leaves the room in disgust when they begin to play Debussy. Draco sits, there though, leaning forward in a comfortable chair with his hands resting on his knees, a fond smile on his lips as he watches and listen to her play.

Scorpius wants the fond, forgiving love his parents have.

5. Scorpius doesn't quite know how he became best friends with Albus Potter. The Ravenclaw was fun and cheerful, a new experience for Scorpius, and he invited himself into the compartment Scorpius was in on their first train ride to Hogwarts. They bonded over exploding snap (at which they were terrible), chocolate frogs (Albus got seven of his dad in the train ride alone), and acid pops (the favorite of both). When they were sorted into different houses, Scorpius thought that would be the end of it. Albus Potter, though, was as stubborn as his mother and father combined. In all the classes they had together, Albus partnered with him, much to the disapproval of other Slytherins at first. Scorpius didn't mind because Albus was intelligent and talented and interesting. There weren't any Slytherins he'd rather be friends with; they were all too much like Scorpius himself.

Scorpius has always liked differences.

6. When Albus' cousin Molly gets sorted into Slytherin, she attaches herself to him and Albus. Molly isn't nearly as kind as Albus, but she is just as fun and up for adventure. Scorpius doesn't tell anyone, but he likes her feisty sense of excitement and her spoiled superciliousness. He acts shocked and appalled for her benefit though, and she grins delightedly when he tsks or scolds her, a razor sharp barring of her teeth. The first time he breaks and laughs at her, she is even more delighted. Her tinkling, pixyish giggle is joyful and loud and he privately thinks of her as Titania, the willful fairy queen.

He loves the magic of her uninhibited laughter.

7. Molly loves to fight. It doesn't take him long to notice this trait. She fights with everyone around her, and it isn't just because she insists on getting her own way. It's her hair he thinks, studying the vivid red color. Red hair used to be taken as a sign of lunacy, he remembers. He thinks they may have had the right of it then. Molly is insane. Her hair shows the depth of her insanity, he thinks, the dark, vibrant blood-red-scarlet that looks more like Lily Luna Potter's Evans' variety of auburn than the typical Weasley ginger. It's so much brighter than the other Weasleys, he thinks, because she is so much crazier.

Scorpius knows he will always crave her brand of madness.

8. The first time he brings Molly home to meet his family, both his parents and grandparents are incredulous. It was a surprise just who the girl he was brining home was (he didn't know quite how to tell them), and even though it was only his sixth year, he knew he wanted to marry her and really, really wanted them to like her. The Malfoys might not have been the most demonstrative family, but they all genuinely loved each other and he wanted her to be accepted. She wore a shockingly short bright purple cocktail dress with a ruffle that went from one shoulder down the opposite arm. One arm was bare and the dress, so tight he thought it must have been sewn on, was completely backless. Her mouth was just an inch or two beneath his own, courtesy of strappy silver sandals with heels so long and sharp that they looked as if they could double as a deadly weapon. She kissed him full on the mouth and grinned mockingly at him when she pulled herself out of the floo. She was doing it to shock his family, he knew, to give them something other than her name to disapprove of.

Narcissia greeted her delightedly with a tight hug and kisses on both cheeks.

9. Scorpius never thought he'd love a woman the same way his grandfather does. Lucius likes that Narcissia is the queen of society, that other men want her and that she could have her pick of any of them. Molly never lets Scorpius forget the same thing. She flirts, pouts, and uses other men as near slaves to do her bidding. She likes riling him up, and even though he trusts her, he pretends to be jealous. For all Molly's playful flirtations and manipulative temper tantrums, she's got a heart of gold and she would never betray him.

She doesn't realize she drives him crazy just by loving him.

10. Molly has a chain of different smiles. The one she gives most often is her razor-edged shark grin, a contemptuous baring of her teeth that is meant more to intimidate than to show enjoyment. Her biting smirk is made to rub salt in the wounds of the people she offends, who she proudly considers her 'victims'. The first time she hears him play the piano, she smiles the same way his father does, a soft, sweet curve of her beautiful lips. When he kisses her, she quirks the corner of her mouth up at him and her nose wrinkles the tiniest little bit. When she is overcome with joy, which happens more and more often the closer they get, her grin is wide and trusting without a hint of artifice or malice.

He doesn't know which smile he loves best.

11. When he asks her, Christmas morning of his sixth year, to marry him, down on one knee and the box holding the ring every wife of a Malfoy heir wore before her wedding day in shaking hands, she kneels in front of him and kisses him gently. "Of course I will." She whispers, and he thinks she has been planning their wedding from the first day she met him. "But we are not naming any of our children Ophiuchus." The snake-holder constellation, he realizes, knowing that she's mocking him again.

He's too busy kissing her to answer.

12. The summer he turned fifteen, Scorpius decided he wanted to prove to everyone that he loved his father and that he was proud of him. After get foolishly drunk with Albus and Molly, they froze a picture of the dark mark and took it to a muggle tattoo artist. He knows that tattoo is removable, and than everyone who sees it automatically thinks he's an evil Death Eater wannabe. He leaves it on though, because Molly gives everyone her shark-grin when they stare at him in horror and his father's eyes mist up, with sorrow or appreciation he doesn't know. He wears short sleeves so everyone knows it there, because he's never seen his father bare his arms. When he met Molly's parents, she tsked and rolled up the sleeves of the shirt he had borrowed from his father. "Mom, Dad," she told them, her hand gripping his arm so tightly he knew that even though she would never admit it, she is afraid, "This is the man I'm going to marry."

He loves that she gives her malicious shark grin even to them.


	11. Roxanne Weasley

A/N: I may just be doing 13 or 14 chapters to this story instead of 12…Luna's kids need stories too, don't they?

12 Things about Roxanne Weasley:

1. Roxanne loves being a Gryffindor. She loves adventure, exploring the castle after hours and sneaking into the Forbidden Forest. So many of her cousins do the same, she knows, but she's the only one who never gets caught. Roxanne has always had extraordinarily good luck. She won't tell anyone, because she will see the sadness in their eyes and on their faces and there's nothing she hates more than that, but she secretly credits her luck to Uncle Fred. He's her guardian angel, she knows. Freddie might be his namesake, but she privately thinks of the dead man as her own.

After all, she was born on the anniversary of his death.

2. Roxanne loves coffee. The smell, the taste, the glorious rush of caffeine, everything about coffee delights her. She'll drink it any way it's served, but she especially loves the way piping hot coffee burns her mouth and throat as it goes down. She drinks it slow, savoring each delicious sip. At Hogwarts, it's harder to get. Everyone drinks pumpkin juice ad the professors disapprove of their students living off of coffee. Luckily though, he dad told her just how to get into the kitchens. The house elves love her, and every time she visits them, they serve her a cappuccino with a little design made of cocoa powder and foam on the top. They make her delicious desserts too; her favorite is Dobby's renowned Bakewell Pudding. He always adds blackberries or cherries to it just for her.

Her Uncle Fred loved coffee too.

3. Roxanne loves that she is just a little bit different than her cousins. Two of Bill and Fleur's children may be beautiful blondes, and Harry's sons may have his unruly black hair, but the rest of her cousins are all pale, freckly, redheads. She isn't and she's proud. Her black hair is straight and thick and while she's not dark, she's got more color than the rest of them, a lovely shade of her favorite milky coffee. She has her dad's blue eyes and her mom's lean frame and she is the only Weasley girl who doesn't sunburn.

She's proud of both sides of her family.

4. Freddie doesn't think their parents love each other. He thinks their mom settled for the twin of a man she couldn't have and that their father wanted someone who would let him grieve in peace. She knows he is both right and wrong. They hold onto Uncle Fred a little too much, mourning him so much that it makes them silent and gets in the way of their own happiness. But they do love each other. Angelina makes George Baked Alaska every Valentine's Day, and he brings her home a bouquet of red daisies, heliotropes, and yellow tulips. Freddie might not speak the language of flowers, but their parents do. There were always red daisies, to tell of beauty unknown to the possessor, heliotropes, to show devotion; and red tulips, to signify the declaration of affection.

Roxanne understands that flowers are a beautiful way to say "I love you."

5. She cannot bear to see her brother so unhappy. He is not the same irrepressibly charming boy who made her laugh, but a viciously witty teen who is killing himself with melancholy. She can't help but pick fights with him and the first time he makes her cry, she decides it will be the last. She doesn't talk to him for five years, which is sickeningly easy to avoid doing, and avoids him at all costs. She's probably making him more miserable, she knows, but she cannot bear to watch the frown lines between his brows and next to his mouth deepen anymore.

She learned to hate sadness when she was young.

6. Her favorite song is by an old blues singer named Eartha Kitt, "I want to be evil." Roxanne agrees. She's always been a good girl, and sometimes she wants to upset her entire family the same way Molly does with a feral grin and a bat of her pretty blue eyes. Roxanne knows she won't though; she likes happiness too much to really want to upset anyone. What she really wants is to have fun. Molly and Albus have the kind of dangerous fun she only imagines having, they drink and smoke and duel and get into fistfights (not like Hugo, whose wrathful violence is more like a blitz attack than an actual fight, and there is no joy there), and above all they live without fear of consequences, without a thought to fear or future sorrow.

Roxanne always fears the consequences.

7. Lysander Scamander is cheery and jovial and reminds her of a merry sort of Nordic bear. He's just a two years older than her, but he is twice her size and his wildly curly blonde hair is always long enough to flop into his eyes. She finally settles on the idea that he is rather like an overgrown cherub. Everyone is always in a good mood around him, even his Slytherin twin (who frightens most people, truthfully), though they rarely talk at school, and you can't help but giggle at his nutty ideas and joyful, pleasant humor.

She loves to laugh.

8. Lysander is big and brave (he is a Gryffindor, after all) but he doesn't like to fight because he knows he can hurt people and when a Slytherin insults his mother in front of the entire Great Hall, it isn't impulsive excitable Lysander that punches him, but his twin. Lysander pulls the normally cool and collected Lorcan off the boy, but not before his nose is broken. It was lucky he was there, Roxanne thinks staring at the way the sixteen year old boy's arms bulge as he works to hold his brother back. No one else would have been strong enough to prevent such a big teen from attacking again. He whispers something in his brother's ear and Lorcan pulls himself upright, straightening his clothes and adjusting his hair and tie. They are identical, Roxanne knows, but even without the house colors on their clothes she knows she could tell them apart.

Lysander is always ready to smile.

9. They don't see eye to eye, she learns, Luna Lovegood's sons. Lysander is so much like their mother, more rational maybe, but just as free spirited and Lorcan isn't. He is the most cynical person she has ever met, even more than her cousin Louis, and when his brother coerces Lorcan into joining them for a picnic so his two favorite people in the world can get to know each other, Lysander laughingly tells her that he's always seen the bad in the world. "When we were exploring the German Alps, all he could see was the Nazis. In India, wives burning on the funeral pyre. Russian? Rasputin and Communism." Lorcan rolls his eyes but he doesn't disagree. They aren't twins like her father and his brother were, she thinks, one soul in two bodies, but yin and yang. They are mirror opposites, light and dark spilt into two beings.

She isn't like her mother after all.

10. When Freddie introduces her to Maria, she is struck by how perfect the woman is for him. She understands his anger, but she doesn't let him dwell on it and she makes him happy. After their marriage, Roxanne knows Uncle Fred was watching out for her brother too. Freddie showers Maria in jewels and silks and she dances around the house with him, both of them singing out of tune to silly love songs. She loves pranks and her crafty mind is without cruelty. She's feisty and fun, and Roxanne is not surprised that everyone in the family loves Maria. She loves her too, because she brought Freddie back to them.

The family dinners grow bigger and more wonderful every year.

11. Lysander asks her to marry him two years after she moves in with him. He serves her breakfast in bed, and she nearly chokes on the engagement ring he's hidden in her muffin. He saves her, laughing, and they both laugh through the proposal. She can barely answer through her tears of mirth.

They laugh at the wedding too.

12. When Lysander has a problem, he doesn't turn to her. It used to bother her, early in their relationship. He goes to Lorcan first, whose advice is often downright malevolent and who can usual be counted on to fix the problem for his minutes-younger brother without telling him. It makes Lysander mad when he does, but she understands. Her dad was the older twin too. When they have their first children, two beautiful twin baby girls, she wants to name them after Fred and George but her brother has beaten her too it. Luna Georgina and Angelina Fredericka are beautiful names anyway. When she has twin boys, she names them Fabian Lysander and Gideon Lorcan. When she has her next set, a boy and a girl, she declares that she is done, no more babies. Godric and Godiva are soon followed by Alice and Annabelle, however, and she beats her cousin Hugo's record baby count by one when they are joined by Rolf and Roland. Two months after her father dies, she finds out she is pregnant again. She knows the names are taken, but she names the redheaded boys Fred and George anyway. Maybe this time, there won't be any unhappy endings.

Her house is filled with laughter.


	12. Molly Weasley II

12 Things about Molly Weasley II

1. When she is six, Molly realizes she is nothing like her namesake. She doesn't much like people, especially little children, and she has never wanted to be a mother or a wife. A trophy bride, maybe, if the man is rich enough and she is valued enough. Even as a little girl, Molly knows that the family disapproves of her because she is not like her other cousins.

Sometimes, she wishes she was.

2. Molly has always known that Lucy is angry at her because Molly is like their father and Lucy is angry at him. Lucy doesn't see their father in herself, however, and Molly is angry at her for that.

Molly's anger makes her mean.

3. Molly knows she is not beautiful in the bewitching way Dominique and Victorie are, or the regal way Lily Luna is, but she knows she is nonetheless beautiful. Hers is a sinister, feral kind of beauty and she tries not to think of Bellatrix Lestrange when men stare.

She is not evil, she tells herself, even if she is a Slytherin.

4. When she is sorted into Slytherin, she is terrified. She begged the sorting hat not to put her there, asked if she could be a Ravenclaw, even a Hufflepuff, instead. "You would do well in Gryffindor," the hat tells her, but places her in Slytherin anyway. It's cousin Albus, who she has always liked best, who cheers the loudest for her. His best friend Scorpius welcomes her to the house and makes her feel at ease. She doesn't feel so alone, even if she's the first Weasley to be in Slytherin house in as long as anyone can remember.

She's always been the exception.

5. Scorpius may have been her first crush and she may have fallen in love with him, but he was not the only boy she was ever attracted to. Lorcan Scamander was the only person she's ever known who was deliberately cruel and evil. He could be the next Lord Voldemort, she thinks, and the handsome façade over the wicked soul simultaneously fascinates and repulses her. Molly, though, has never really wanted to be evil, and though she may be mean, she never really means to cause harm. Lorcan delights in creating twisted plots and broken hearts and bruised and blooded bodies.

She is as afraid of evil as her father was.

6. She likes the way Scorpius doesn't laugh. A secret smile always plays about his lips when he lectures her, instead. When she turns Olivia Midgen, who had the audacity to flirt with him all through dinner, lime green, he can't stop himself from laughing.

She likes the way his deep chuckles make her soul shiver.

7. Scorpius doesn't become her best friend over night. He disapproves of her too, she thinks, and so she take delight in shocking him the same way she likes to shock her parents. She drinks when he and Albus offer her firewhiskey and she is secretly pleased when he doesn't laugh at her even though she coughs through her first (and last) cigarette. The first time they make love, she is fifteen and sneaks into his room. It doesn't shock him the way it should, she thinks, and knows he has done this before. When he moans her name, though, she knows she could never imagine this with anyone but her own imperfect Scorpius. So she flirts to keep him on his toes and knows he only pretends to be jealous to keep her happy.

The Malfoys have always been snobs though, and secretly, she knows, he likes that other men appreciate her beauty too.

8. When her cousin James loses the girl that everyone thought was the love of his life, Molly is scared. She starts planning her and Scorpius's wedding the day after the memorial service, because if either of them are going to die young, they will be as close as possible until then. She asks Rose, the family romantic, to be her maid of honor because Rose, she knows, is a dreamy, naive idealist who believes whole heartedly in redemption, fate, and soul mates.

Molly doesn't like to admit it, but she's a lot like Rose.

9. Molly knows she is mean. That's what makes her Molly. She likes to argue and fight and she will never be caught dead letting anyone call her "Mollywobbles" like her grandmother. It's a perfectly wretched nickname and she refuses to let anyone call her anything but Molly. Molly is a good, solid English name, she thinks. And even if she isn't much like the grandmother she was named for, she does respect Molly Weasley the first.

She hopes she could be strong enough to lead her family through a war if she needed to.

10. Scorpius gets that stupid tattoo when he is fifteen because she and her cousin were drunk enough to agree that it's a good idea. She knows that it makes even more girls want him. He is handsome and rich and though none of them would ever condescend to marry or even date the turncoat's son, she knows that a number of them don't mind sneaking off to broom closets or the astronomy tower with him. When he gets the tattoo that horrifies most people and turns a few on, she is absurdly proud of him and she's known, since the first time he tsks at her and patches her up after a nasty duel, that she will marry him and keep the wonderful, silly man who has to prove himself all the time all to herself.

She knows exactly who he is without proof.

11. When she goes to dinner with Scorpius and his half-brother for the first time, she knows he is scared to death. He's only talked to Damien once when he was nine, and even though their in the same house, by the time he was thirteen and had worked up the courage to talk to his brother, Damien had graduated. Cousin Rose marries him though, and Molly asks her to set up a dinner so that they can talk. It's at a nice, neutral restaurant and they dinner is perfectly lovely. They make it a tradition, and by the time they are all attending Weasley family dinners together, the brothers are close.

She loves knowing what will make Scorpius happy.

12. Scorpius, she thinks, is a stupid name. Draco, Lucius, Astoria, and Narcissia aren't any better. She tells him that Molly Weasley the second will not name her child something hideous and stupid whatever the Malfoy family tradition is. He tells her he believes her, yet somehow her first born, a boy, is named Hercules. She tells him that if there are to be any more stupid names, they will not be having more children. He agrees and their next child is named Perseus. Hydrus and Cygnus was where she drew the line, however, and her fifth child is named Diana.

She still thinks Scorpius is a stupid name.


End file.
